Brussels, 25/03/2004 (Agence Europe) - In a press release of 23 March, four association representing the business community in Europe, Eurocommerce, UNICE (employers), UEPME (SMEs) and Eurochambres (chambers of commerce and industry) launched an appeal to Heads of State and governments to "add some new dynamics" to the Lisbon strategy and work towards an agreement on the EU constitution. They are also strongly in support of the Heads of State and governments' intention to strengthen measures for combating terrorism in Europe.
The four associations underline that the EU will not attain its objectives to make the EU the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010 unless it makes significant progress in reforms in the national arena. They indicated that it was necessary and urgent on both national and European levels to take action and are calling on Member States to: 1) improve regulation, with a compulsory business impact assessment for new legislative proposals; 2) engage in reforms of social protection systems and decrease structural government deficits in view of meeting the challenge of an ageing population; 3) stimulating R&D an innovation in cooperation with businesses and knowledge institutions and improve the general, fiscal and financial conditions for innovative investment; 4) promote entrepeneurship by lowering corporate tax; 5) develop strategies and concrete action plans for stimulating entrepeneurship in all sectors and promote training in this area; 6) promote life long learning to meet the needs of business; 7) accelerate reforms of the national labour markets to introduce more flexibility and productivity at work, the ultimate goal being to create more and better jobs by 2010; 8) close the gap in implementing the internal market to boost efficiency.